


Distortions

by cristianoronaldo



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cristianoronaldo/pseuds/cristianoronaldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a short thing about complicated relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distortions

There was something so painful about the way Cesc was staring out the window. Wistful, like he wanted to touch something that didn’t exist. The sheet was wrapped around his back, and he leaned against the armchair like something out of a damn renaissance painting, like he belonged on the ceiling of a cathedral alongside the angels and saints.

“It’s going to stop raining soon,” he said. Iker was still in bed, watching and wishing. There was a bruise on Cesc’s collarbone.

“I hope not.” Cesc stood up to pull the thin curtains closed, and the sheet slipped farther. Iker could almost see where his hands had been the night before. “I like it. Makes me feel like there’s music.”

Cesc always said stuff like that, and Iker understood, but he didn’t think it was right, so he always answered the same way. “Music?” He pulled the covers up to his chin; it felt alien without the sheet. “What are you on about now?”

“Music,” Cesc repeated, staring Iker down like he always did. “And don’t pretend you don’t hear it.”

The other man rolled his eyes. Tried to appear dignified without seeming sorry. It was harder than he expected, every time, to not give Cesc everything he wanted. He liked to tell himself he was preparing the poor kid for the world because the world wasn’t going to spit out a handshake just because Cesc felt like making friends.

“I don’t hear anything,” Iker said finally, reaching for his shirt.

Cesc sighed loudly like he was bearing the weight of a building. He straightened, let the sheet fall. Stood framed by the curtain and the window, the light streaming in behind him. He didn’t smile; his shoulders were set.

~~

“I don’t think you understand what you put me through,” Cesc said, as they were walking to Iker’s car after dinner. The whole team had been there; it wasn’t out of the ordinary.

“And what’s that?” Iker kept his voice low. He was driving Villa home too.

Cesc’s jaw tightened, and he stopped in the middle of the walkway from the restaurant to the parking lot. His shirt was tan, and it made him look younger. His jeans were new, and they didn’t do him any favors.

“Hell,” he said finally.

It was the kind of thing that normally would have made Iker laugh, but he didn’t smile, and from the way Villa was backing away from the two of them, he wasn’t the only one to understand the seriousness, the weight in Cesc’s eyes.

Iker looked at him for a long time, chewing on the inside of his cheek until he could finally work up the courage to let Cesc down. Finally, after twisting his hands and taking numerous useless deep breaths, he brushed Cesc’s elbow with his fingertips.

“Come on,” he said, “We should get going.”

“Don’t,” Cesc said, and he moved away. He slammed the door when they got to the car. Villa flinched more than Iker.

And later, when they were back at Iker’s house despite it all, Cesc was tugging off his shirt, sitting back on his heels with a look of determination like he was falling backwards off a cliff and trying to save himself before hitting the bottom.

“Don’t,” he said again when Iker reached forward to touch him. Then, decidedly, again. “Don’t. I can’t stand seeing what you do to me.”

Iker passed him a pillow. It wasn’t the first time Cesc needed to pretend he could end their vicious cycle. “And what is that-- what do I do to you?”

“You make me lose my mind.” He leaned into the pillow, let his face fall close enough to Iker’s for their cheeks to brush; his hand rested on Iker’s shoulder. “You make me talk about rain like it’s music.” He laughed, quietly like he was embarrassed.

Iker lay on his side, watching Cesc for a long time before he let his eyelids fall shut. He wasn’t tired. “That’s not my fault. You talk nonsense all the time.”

And then Iker opened his eyes just in time to see the wave of pain break across Cesc’s features. His eyebrows lifted infinitesimally, hardly surprised by now. His eyes were too dark without the light on. Iker liked it best like this; he didn’t have to witness every inch he moved the other man away from him.

Cesc reached around to tug his shirt over his head. He looked up at Iker like he still needed permission. Looking like a kicked puppy, he pulled at Iker’s remaining clothing.

“You look for release in all the wrong places,” Iker told him afterwards, when they were both looking up at the ceiling with that feeling like their chests had caved in. “You think being hurt means someone loves you.” He paused, heard Cesc swallow. “That’s stupid,” he said harshly, childishly. “You romanticize that feeling, and it’s really, really stupid. Consider that the first advice your captain gives you.”

Cesc flipped over to bury his head in the pillow. His back was smooth. No scratches this time. “If I’m digging into myself, you’re the weapon,” he replied, his voice muffled. “Consider that the first shot fired from -- whatever I am to you.”

Iker folded his hands in his lap. Very calmly, he rested his hand on Cesc’s back. “We’re friends,” he said, feeling very much like the twisted negative space he’d become.

~~

When Gerard came around, there was an energy in the room that wasn’t there before. He was making a banana smoothie in the kitchen when Cesc finally woke up. He hated the noise of the blender, so he hardly ever used it, but he tolerated it when Gerard was around-- often these days.

He flicked the machine off, started pouring himself and Cesc a glass. His eyes were a deeper blue, and his hands were huger. What looked like a goofy, lopsided grin to anyone else looked like a clever, all-knowing smile to Cesc, so when Gerard sat himself across the table from Cesc with the same grin from when they were kids, Cesc leaned forward and, with just one look, felt like he could communicate everything.

He was wrong, of course. Gerard had to ask him about seven times to just spit the whole story out, but finally Gerard knew, and he sat there, and he clasped his hands on his lap, and then he leaned forward and had a conversation with himself--or with his hands, Cesc couldn’t tell. His face was in his hands, and he kept scratching his chin like there was more to understand. Like maybe Cesc would open his mouth again and a completely new story would fall out.

Finally, he said (to Cesc this time, not to his hands), “Well I always knew you were eager to hit the self-destruct button, but.” He scratched his chin again.

“I’m fucking our captain,” Cesc said, like somehow repeating the whole story in one short sentence might help things.

Gerard looked away like hearing it was painful. He hesitated, looked back at Cesc like he was checking for something. Making sure something still existed. Said, “Do you know he’s capable of using you?”

“Yes.”

“And does he?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re just, what, okay with it?”

“No. I’m not okay with it. But I shove everything to the side because, god, when he--” And Cesc cut off because he was thinking about useless things like skipped breakfasts, smiles, teeth at his earlobe. It was such a hurried, dizzying combination of what was good and what was painful that he was beginning to see where he had gone all wrong. The painful and the good were too close. Starting to bleed into one another. He didn’t know how to hold on.

“When he… what?” Gerard asked slowly.

“Forget it,” Cesc said. “I’m not okay with it, but I don’t know how to stop loving him.”

“For starters.” He took a gulp of his smoothie. “You don’t love him.”

And Cesc didn’t listen to any more of what he said because he was stubborn and blind, and he didn’t care for reality anyway because, in reality, Iker was fucking him to pieces, not tenderly brushing his hair back. Not placing kisses down his spine.

But the problem, Cesc thought,--the real, harrowing problem-- was that Iker did those things to. He fucked Cesc to pieces, and then he brushed his hair back and kissed a path down his spine and apologized for spilling coffee all over the sheets when he felt like drinking it in bed.

“No,” Cesc said though Gerard didn’t ask for an answer, and he was technically still in the middle of explaining why Cesc should cut all non-professional ties with Iker. He was probably right too. “No, I don’t think I can change a thing.”

~~

“Would you?” Cesc asked, thinking back to the conversation with Gerard from the previous month. “Would you take back anything that we’ve done?”

“Sure,” Iker said, not sounding bothered. “Why not?”

“I don’t know.” He was trying to sound just as unperturbed. He scratched his chin because Gerard had been doing it. “Doesn’t make sense to be sorry.”

“I never said I was sorry. Only said I would take it back. If you take things back, they hurt less. If you take back every thing you ever did in this world, you’d be a blank slate again, and I can’t even imagine how wonderful that would be.” It was the longest Iker had spoken to Cesc since the start of it all when he took Cesc aside and whispered the words that would chain Cesc to him permanently.

“A blank slate just means someone’s going to run over and write something all over you,” Cesc said. He didn’t believe in fresh starts. He thought it was a lot like planting flowers at a cemetery. There was a chance for something new to happen, but previous lives and previous wasted chances would always overwhelm the new spark of life.

Iker was trying, and he knew Cesc could see it, and Iker was ashamed to so openly combat for someone’s interest, but he did it anyway. “What if you write it, I don’t know-- I don’t know, what if you write the damn thing yourself.”

“Write what yourself?” It was Cesc’s turn to pretend to be lost. “Your life-- or something? Are you getting thoughtful on me, Iker?”

There was a split second between question and answer, and Iker’s eyes were the tensest, most professionally controlled Cesc had seen since they started ignoring the rest of the world. Then, slowly, something broke down, and the sliver of a smile appeared on his lips.

“No,” he said, “But I do believe in blank slates, and I do believe in second chances.”

“I like you better when you talk like this.” Cesc was looking up at the ceiling again. He always did that when his chest felt like caving in. “Makes you seem more human.”

“And what am I otherwise?”

My weapon, Cesc wanted to say, but he kept his mouth shut and moved away. But when Iker stuck his arm out awkwardly to pull Cesc closer, the younger man fell back into his embrace.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i really like sleepy boys who say stupid things to each other.   
> (btw my one source of joy in life is knowing that you all know that I don't take myself seriously so please continue to know that)


End file.
